Fewer seek asylum, but deportation figures are also down

By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor

12:01AM BST 24 Aug 2005

The number of asylum seekers coming to Britain is continuing to fall, Home Office figures showed yesterday. But just a small proportion of the estimated 300,000 failed applicants still in the country is being removed.

During the election campaign, Tony Blair promised that by the end of this year failed asylum seekers would be deported faster than new, unfounded, claimants arrive.

But the figures show that removals in the three months from April to June were lower than at the same stage last year. In 2004, around 15,000 asylum seekers were removed - 17 per cent fewer than in the previous 12 months.

Although there was a slight rise over the last quarter of 2004, deportations still make up less than half the number of new claimants. In addition, more than 30,000 failed applicants who have been in the country a long time have been allowed to stay indefinitely.

In the quarter ending on June 30 this year, there were 7,190 applicants, including dependants, a drop of 13 per cent on the previous quarter.

The annual total now looks likely to be around 30,000, which is about the same as when Labour took office in 1997, after which the numbers soared to a peak of more than 100,000 in 2002.

The Home Office said the fall was the result of government policies to speed up procedures and to cut off entry points through the Channel Tunnel and France.

Tony McNulty, immigration minister, said: ''More needs to be done. Our five-year immigration strategy sets out ways in which we will continue to deal with attempts to abuse our asylum system, such as fingerprinting all visa nationals and implementing our programme to monitor all those entering and leaving the UK.''

He added: ''We remain committed to our aim of removing more failed asylum seekers on a monthly basis, by the end of 2005, than there are new unfounded claims."

Humphrey Malins, the Conservative immigration spokesman, said the failure to deport bogus refugees "makes a mockery" of the Government's attempt to tackle the problem.

He added: "The number of failed asylum seekers who remain in the country continues to increase. At this rate it would take nearly 20 years just to deal with those already here - let alone deal with future arrivals. The number of deportations is in fact falling. The continued failure to address this problem beggars belief."

Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of Migrationwatch UK, said: "The bad news is that removals remain stuck at only 1,000 a month.

"This means that the pool of failed asylum seekers, already over a quarter of a million, is still growing.''

Habib Rahman, of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said: "We should be deeply ashamed that more people do not claim asylum in the United Kingdom given that one in 300 of the world's people is fleeing persecution, violence or war."